At least one person has reportedly undergone the cutting-edge technique. Suspended animation involves replacing patients’ blood with cold saline fluid for up to two hours, before their hearts are restarted.
Doctors have yet to reveal whether the trials have been fully successful.
Dr Samuel Tisherman, who is leading the trial at the University of Maryland Medical Centre, admitted in New Scientist the first time a patient was placed in suspended animation it was “a little surreal”.
The patients are not volunteers, but receiving treatment after being admitted in a critical condition – usually from gunshot or stab wounds to the chest.
The patients are placed into suspended animation only when traditional efforts, such as blood transfusion or opening the chest cavity for surgery, have been exhausted.
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Suspended animation works by lowering the body temperature and reducing cells’ demand for oxygen.
Demand for oxygen is very high at normal body temperature, around 37C.
Panic and stress, such as in the case of a traumatic injury, can exacerbate this, triggering even higher demands on the heart and blood supply.
But the activity in all cells is rapidly reduced in a body in a hypothermic state, lowering such demands.
Dr Tisherman has previously compared the technique to incidents when people survive cold water drowning.
There are reports of people being submerged for up to an hour, due to organs’ reduced demand for oxygen.
In a Ted talk last year, he said: “You’re under water, you can’t breathe, but your body cools fast enough that your brain, your heart, your other organs are protected, and you can actually survive for an hour.
However, inducing hypothermia externally has major risks, such as reducing coagulation, as well as stress and shivering.
Suspended animation aims to reproduce the benefits of being chilled, but in a controlled environment.
The technique has frequently featured in science fiction, offering the opportunity for travelling into deep space while their body remains in stasis.
But Dr Tisherman is clear this is not the aim here.
He told New Scientist: “I want to make clear that we’re not trying to send people off to Saturn. “We’re trying to buy ourselves more time to save lives.”